Different awards then in Civ2 GOTM.

[Matrix]

For the Game of the Month for Civ2, there are, next to the gold/silver/bronze medals, two other awards one can win: a blue star for the one with the highest standard score and a green medal for the fastest finish. The blue star is obscolete since there is no special scoring system. The green star could be kept, but...

Won't it be nicer to have awards for each different victory? So for each type of victory, the one with the highest score gets the appropriate award.

How about it? And will we keep the green medal as sort of "stand alone" award?

 

[Lord Oden]

How is the global ranking system going to work?

Oh for ****s&Giggles, I think we should have the "Fastest death" for the newbies.

 

[Matrix]

Same as in the GR in Civ2GOTM. I'll normalize all the results (bring the average to 25) and the average of the best 3 of the last 5 games will be your score.

As long as we haven't played 5 GOTM's, this is the GR:
After 1 game: the same scores, but normalized.
After 2 games: the average of both normalized scores. If you haven't played one game, your score is 0 there.
After 3 games: the average of all normalized scores. Again, if you haven't played... ...
After 4 games: the average of the best 3 norm. scores.

 

[Kev]

Matrix:

If you don't mind doing the work, I think a separate award for each road to victory is a great idea. I think that as we progress in Civ3 we'll discover that one method of winning will yield a better score than others, and having different categories for winners can help assure that we don't all start gravitating toward that one style.

In future games, it may be nice to tweak the roads to victory options at the beginning. For example, you can make it so everyone HAS to go for a culture victory or a space victory by shutting off the other options. But that can be for later games.

And I still like the "green star" award and think that it could be left in as a stand alone.

 

[Cyrik]

awards for each diffrent victory sound very nice. wouldn´t be very fair to punish someone becouse he always plays on culture or something and that gives less points. don´t know if thats true, just an example
the "green star" should be left in and a fastest death award might be fun, would like to see how fast ppl can realy die if they try to so maybe sending 2 saves in would be good. 1 for your best game and one for the fastest death you could get

 

[runaway]

I think Kev has a good suggestion, but I don't know if it would be practical. It does seem that some game ending styles yield higher or lower scores than others. Maybe you could disable different methods each month? Or an alternative (like Kevin suggested) would be to have separate rankings for each type of finish.

 

[PositiveAttitud]

My initial (very limited) play experience with Civ3 seems to indicate a very strong scoring bias to quick "rush" victories.

For example, while playing the Romans on Regent Level I was able to score over 9000 points during a "rush" campaign. I haven't come close to half that score winning by any other method (cultural, spaceship, etc.)

On the surface, it would therefore appear that recognizing high scores for each victory type is quite appropriate. However, this approach IMHO does not seem to neutrralize the "rush conquest" bias.

If however a players score was normalized against only those players with identical victory conditions (e.g., spaceship wins vs spaceship wins, cultural wins vs. cultural wins) the incentive to "rush" victory could be reduced.

I would propose a much simpler approach. Just mandate the victory conditions each month. That way a player's all around abilty will become apparent. In order to achieve high scores each month the player will have to be adept at all of the different strategies needed to win.

I don't think it would be necessary to specify only one victory condition. Just eliminating one or two victory routes each month might be suffucuent.

Thanks for a great site.

PositiveAttitude

 

[donsig]

I'm only on my second Civ III game but it has already occurred to me that we will run into the same scoring problem we have in the Civ II GOTM. To wit, my first game ended in a cultural victory in 1985 AD with a score of 964. Is it not possible to get the same type of victory on the same difficultity level but at an earlier date? Will we soon be needing a special GOTM scoring system or does normalizing the score give earlier finish dates a bonus?

I like the idea of special awards for each category of winning. How about something along the lines of the Oscar or Emmy? We could have a 'Diplo' for the UN victory for instance...

Restricting the paths to victory in the GOTMs would be ok if done sporadically but I think most should have all options on.

I'm not so sure the early death award is such a good idea. I think most players who die in the Civ II GOTMs don't even submit. Check the old results.

 

[celeron450]

I agree that something needs to be done to counteract the early victory bias. Players that win by space race, culture, and even diplomatic victory can not overcome the bonus that comes with an early conquest victory. I played a two civ game recently on Monarch level, my opponent started only a few squares away. I made warriors continuously, and I was able to take his city after a few dozen turns. My score was over 19000.

My personal favorite option is to specify the victory method required for each GOTM. Normalizing the results within each victory type would also be a viable option if there are enough wins of each type to differentiate the results.

celeron450